The Importance of Follow Up

Ever wonder what happens to your pitch, application, resume (substitute whatever word applies) after you hit send?

Anyone that works on the Internet or uses email for that matter knows what it’s like to send something and feel like it’s been lost in cyberspace.

You send out your precious information.

Then nada, nothing, zip.

A while back I completed a course on pitching to magazines. There were two key actions involved; a phone call and an email. You either rang them with your idea and then emailed the pitch if they agreed or you emailed the pitch and then rang them to follow up.

This process seems easy enough doesn’t it?

Unfortunately many of us (including me) can occasionally skip one of these important steps.

The all important follow up.

If you could benefit from a more consistent follow up strategy, these ten points can help.

Schedule time to follow up

Often the biggest problems with following up is that we get busy working on other projects and simply forget. With this in mind you need to schedule a date and time for each follow up. Set a reminder in your calendar, phone or whatever planning tool you use to make sure you don’t forget.

Follow up in a timely manner

You schedule your follow ups so that you don’t forget or so that you won’t remember eight weeks after you sent the original request. Often we do remember but too much time has come and gone, so we don’t bother. As part of your scheduling process make sure the follow up date is relevant to each situation.

Do It

This is the part where you actually ring that newspaper, magazine, company or individual and ask them if they are interested in your proposal or offer.

This is a part many people simply don’t do. By not following up you are doing yourself an injustice.

Give them time to respond

You’ve sent off your application. Excellent!  Then you send an email the next day asking how you went. Wrong!

While some positions, particularly writing positions, do have a quick turnaround time, they are normally not that quick.

If you are working in different time zones, you need to factor in the difference in time and days.

If you are in Australia obsessively checking your emails Monday morning regarding a request you sent off to someone in the United States you need to realise their weekend isn’t over yet. They could be enjoying time with family, while you are stressing over why you haven’t had a response yet.

Jump the queue

Recently I have been applying for part time admin roles (as well as writing jobs naturally).

The response times on the admin positions are quite long. Between sending off my application and receiving an email advising they had filled the position can take well over a month.  Time I don’t care to wait.

One way around waiting is to allow an appropriate amount of time after the position was posted and then ring up and ask if they have completed all of the interviews. If the interviews are completed and you didn’t get a call, you know you are not in the running.  When that email arrives weeks later advising you weren’t successful, it won’t be a surprise.

Don’t hound people

Some people go nuts with the follow up. They turn into a cyber stalker, shooting off emails with reckless abandon.

Most likely the only thing this will achieve is ticking off the person or company you are hoping to work with.

Don’t do it. It will get you noticed for all of the wrong reasons, ruining any opportunity you may have had.

Don’t assume no response means NO

All too often we don’t hear back and assume no reply definitely means no. This is not always the case.

Make the follow up phone call. If a phone call isn’t possible, try email again.

You would be surprised how many emails get overlooked, so don’t assume your email has been read and rejected. They may not have even gotten around to reading it yet.

Move onto the next task

Under no circumstances do you sit around putting off other projects waiting for a reply. Move straight onto your next task.

It’s hard, I know because I have done this myself, but resist the urge to give yourself RSI checking your inbox 50 times a day. Set yourself a designated time to check email each day and then leave it at that.

Don’t turn into an OCD email checker. Let’s face it; you have plenty of other things to do.

With that in mind, the opposite could also be true. Perhaps you hardly ever check your emails. If you have an email address, make sure you check it regularly.  The regularity will be based on the reason the email account was set up.  A Yahoo account set up for personal or travel purposes doesn’t need to be checked as often. A business email address is a whole different matter.

You don’t want to be missing important emails. The same goes for the inbox on your phone.  If you are applying for any sort of position or opportunity and you supplied your mobile number make sure you check your phone for messages.

Accept there may be no response

In some situations you have to accept that only successful proposals get a reply.  If you were not successful, you will NEVER get a response.

When submitting writing work to websites, you may get an automated message stating that if you don’t hear from them your application was unsuccessful. With high volumes of email traffic they need to set up this auto-respond messages. A good thing about these auto-responders, you know they received your email in the first place.

Sometimes there simply won’t be an answer.  It can be frustrating but also part of doing business on the Internet.

Find out Why

As I mentioned, I have been applying for part time admin roles.  When I haven’t been asked to interview, my friends suggested I call to find out why.  In my situation, I knew when I applied I wasn’t an exact fit (I was close but I didn’t have everything they were after). I didn’t ask why because I didn’t need to.  I understood they had found their exact fit.

However if you do want some feedback or you were an exact fit, it might pay to give the person a call or send them an email. Be polite, brief and understand you might not get a reply. I wouldn’t do this in all cases to be honest.  Use your discretion on this one.

I hope this spurs you on to take action and make those important follow up calls and emails.

Are you a whiz at following up?  Do you have any tips you would care to add? Please leave your comments below.

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This post was written by...

Thea – who has written 265 posts on Write Change Grow.

Hi! Welcome to my blog.  I'm a freelance writer and blogger. For more Write Change Grow goodness, sign up for my free newsletter.  You can connect with me on Facebook and Twitter.

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